King County Metro’s Projects in 2025 and Beyond

57 Replies to “King County Metro’s Projects in 2025 and Beyond”

1. Great overview, thank you.

   I hope the work to re-install trolley wires needed to restore trolley service on the #2 and #12 isn’t falling through the cracks with the completion of the RapidRide G line. Both of those have just short stretches of missing overhead since the Madison St construction (on the #2) and the related reroute (the #12). Does anyone know the status of this?

   1. Hopefully this is on WSDOT to replace the wires they tore down for their highway projects at Montlake/520 and at Broadway/520… At least the funding even if Metro crews are the ones to install it.

   2. I know there’s been talk about the new batteries in trolleybuses but has KCM actually talked about using them in an operational sense at all?

      What’s stopping KCM from using them for these routes?

      1. Nothing except inertia.

      2. They do use them, for route 43. Poles come down at 24th/McGraw and the trolleys run on battery to the UWMC Triangle, and vice versa.

         It does add time at both stops and often requires the operator to walk out to the back, so Metro might be reluctant to deploy it on a higher-frequency route?

      3. @Nicholas

         It really shouldn’t take long to go back on wire. In this video it takes ten seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYgO0IUlFjU. Do you know if they have those funnel things on 24th? (I don’t know what they are called — I’m just calling them funnels.) It would make sense to have the reconnection point at a busy stop (where the bus has to stop anyway). For that matter it would make sense to have several reconnection points scattered around in case the bus gets de-wired as Reece Martin explains in
         this video. (Note: He doesn’t know what those things are called either as you can tell.)

         Maybe Metro considers any off-wire running of the trolley buses to be temporary and didn’t put in those funnels. That could explain why it takes a while.

      4. Metro has been reluctant to build off-wire use into the regular schedule. The main exception is on Broadway where trolleybuses and the streetcar overlap but have incompatible wire requirements or the streetcar can’t navigate trolley cross-wires at intersections. Metro has been buying buses with longer off-wire capability, but seems bureaucratically reluctant to use that feature.

      5. Picture of the Breda bus trolley pole guides at Convention Place Station

         https://www.flickr.com/photos/busdudedotcom/14639760545/

      6. They do have the little guides for the 43 routing, but they don’t seem to work as consistently as they might like. Sometimes the poles manage to bounce outside them.

         There’s often an additional delay northbound at McGraw, which I suspect is just a timepoint hold.

      7. Pie pans = funnel things

   3. The Route 2 inbound pathway may need some signal timing help; the general purpose lane of East Madison Street is often full of traffic; the coaches will need space to turn into from northbound 13th Avenue East. (Also, the East Union Street opening seems odd; the 12th Avenue East pedestrian crossing is not signalized; is that an issue?)

      The fall 2024 changes had some odd aspects, as reported by RossB. Route 10 could have remained on John Street serving the Capitol Hill station; Route 12 could have reached the Route 2 pathway as it already was on East Madison Street; Route 11 could have served East Pine Street; it is a hybrid bus and does not need the new overhead. Route 10 riders are being taken away from the Link station. (Better yet, Route 11 could be consolidated into the G Line, Route 8, or become a shuttle; it need not run under the overhead on Pike-Pine streets.

      The Route 48 trolley project was originally a Seattle one; it was dropped. It needs overhead south of South Dearborn Street.

      Overhead is needed on South Henderson Street between Rainier Avenue South and the Rainier Beach Link station. The R Line is supposedly funded. The overhead could be used now; it need not wait for branding.

      Route 9 could be converted to ETB if truncated at Mt. Baker with existing overhead.

      1. The buses should have been moved off of the pathway of the G once the G was added. The corridor has enough service — other corridors need that kind of frequency. The buses should consolidate on corridors instead of running a block or two away, like they do now. Specifically I would:

         Move the 2 to Pike/Pine. It could dogleg between Union and Pine using either 13th or 14th. The 12 should meet up with the 10 either at Thomas or Aloha. (The latter would mean running a street buses haven’t run on before but it would mean a major frequency improvement for an important area). The 60 should be straightened out and run along Broadway, forming a spine with the streetcar. Yes, the city should have helped make these things happen (with whatever signal changes and other modifications are needed).

         Just doing that would have helped improve headways quite a bit in the area. But I would go further. The route of the 49 ignores the other buses in the area as well as Link. It made sense twenty years ago. It doesn’t make sense now. Ridership on the route has plummeted — for good reason. If you are headed downtown and you are anywhere near Capitol Hill Station you just take Link. The bus should just keep going straight on Broadway — where there are plenty of destinations that rival downtown. Riders heading downtown from say, The Roanoke can transfer to a bunch of buses going on Pike/Pine, the very frequent RapidRide G, the almost as frequent 3/4, or the soon to be very frequent Link. Not everyone needs a one-seat ride to downtown. By combining the bus with the 60 (or a truncated version of the 60 which ends at Beacon Hill Station) you save service hours which means the buses run more frequently (which is way more important than the one-seat ride to downtown).

         The 9 is superfluous. It does not perform well. It would make sense if the 7 was running every couple minutes (because of crowding). At that point you might as well add an express overlay that goes to First Hill (to also save some people a transfer). But that isn’t the case now. During the peak of peak the 7 still isn’t that frequent.

      2. “Move the 2 to Pike/Pine.”

         SDOT’s decision to install all-way stops on both Pike and Pine have made using these streets for bus routes less desirable. There is healthy pedestrian traffic at those intersections throughout the day — and installing stop signs rather than signals really slows down the buses. It adds several minutes to each trip.

         Of course, SDOT added a few more stop signs on the Route 2 parts between 14th and Downtown as well. But those areas don’t get the pedestrian and traffic volumes that Pike and Pine get.

         There are good reasons for slowing traffic down in these areas. However the treatments really hurt bus travel times.

      3. SDOT did not have enough strategic forethought and Metro deferred to SDOT.

         During the reduction exercise in about 2013, Metro floated the concept of a service consolidation on Madison Street; route 2 riders and Virginia Mason made a big fuss.

      4. route 2 riders and Virginia Mason made a big fuss.

         Which is why making relatively small changes is probably not a good way to go. From a political standpoint it becomes way too easy to just keep chipping away at potential changes until you end up with the same problems you started with. The same thing happened with the 65. Folks didn’t want to lose their one-seat ride to Nathan Hale/Jane Addams. But no one mentioned the overall improvement to the network or how other people might connect to the schools.

         If people don’t see a big improvement overall they are way more likely to just insist on the status quo even if we have an outdated, poor system that is losing riders. We need to make a big change for people to recognize that even if their one particular trip is not as good at least other people are coming out ahead. Then the agency needs to be strong enough to do the right thing. It is great to get public input and adjust based on some aspect of the system the planners never considered. But if planners are aware of the trade-offs then they shouldn’t just listen to the squeaky wheel.

      5. “The same thing happened with the 65. Folks didn’t want to lose their one-seat ride to Nathan Hale/Jane Addams.”

         How is the 65 distorted by Nathan Hale?

      6. Mike,
         In Lynnwood Link P2, the planners asked about a Route 65 that served NE 130th Street Link via NE/North 125th/130th streets. It would have imposed a transfer on students living near30th Avenue NE in north Lake City. They objected. In P3, the planners put forward Route 65 that will be split after ST shifts Route 522 to South Shoreline.
         P3 map: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/projects/lynnwood-link-connections/routes/065.pdf?rev=82922cabd72447b68beda03ba75f96e9&hash=6C919328B3152EEA95A084CD6E34CED4

   4. Metro said it would fill in the 1 1/2 blocks of wire the new 12 route needs between 15th & Pine and 17th & Madison, but it sounded like it may be a year or two away. I don’t know about the 2; I thought it was still fully wired.

      1. Route 2 overhead is missing between Union and Union in the bow tie area.

2. As Metro moves from battery buses being a small trial project to a nontrivial portion of the overall fleet, it’s worth asking what their plans are to keep service reliable in the event of the unexpected. For example, is there a single piece of charging equipment at the base where, if it were to ever break, are 250 buses forced offline, all at once until the charger gets fixed? Similarly, what happens if a storm knocks down a power line leading to the base? Even if power is restored in a matter of hours, will this result in the cancellation of large numbers of trips the following day?

   Note that when electrification is just a small pilot project, these questions aren’t really a concern – if a battery bus can’t be charged for one day, you just switch to a diesel bus. But, as the number of battery buses gets bigger, keeping a separate diesel bus in reserve for every battery bus in the active fleet starts to get prohibitively expensive.

   1. I imagine a big generator to keep the chargers humming would be sufficient.

      Or maybe couple windmills and a solar array, which they should honestly should be doing anyway.

      And maybe add a bank of powerwalls. Short-term problems solved.

      1. Hundreds of buses all charging at the same time equates to megawatts of power. Would have to be a really big (and expensive) generator, and even then, it only helps for when the power goes out, not for when equipment breaks.

      2. We have so much unfunded maintenance and needed expansion of powerlines, that the future is distributed power generation. We should be building these systems with our charging stations for not just redundancy, but also for long-term cost savings and eventual off-grid operations.

      3. The bus bases are huge. Roofing all the parking with solar panels wouldn’t be sufficient at the current panel efficiency, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing it.

         You probably want to roof them anyway, to provide protection from the rain in the winter and sun in the summer.

      4. It is fundamentally no different than what happens to an electric rail system (e. g. a subway) when there is a blackout. It depends. Some subway systems have different (independent) power for the trains. Apparently the Toronto Subway can run for a while, but the stations themselves start losing power and eventually the whole thing shuts down. The New York Subway system basically shuts down immediately. Riders have to be evacuated if the blackout lasts a while. I don’t know what would happen with Link. I think it is more like New York than Toronto (the whole thing shuts down).

      5. How about roofing all the open-air platforms, and covering those roofs with solar panels?

         TIBS ought to also have room for some giant windmills (after more elevators are installed).

         If ST can sell electricity back to Seattle City Light and Puget Sound, perhaps ST3 won’t take forever.

      6. Also, ST could be a major partner in the carbon-negative concrete plant, and make even more revenue as an owner of the means of production and the means of erasing its own carbon footprint.

3. The G Line will need some repairs.
   https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/platforms-and-shelters-improperly-built-on-new-capitol-hill-rapidride/

   1. Yeah, that is old news. They screwed up the platforms at three stops as well as all of the bus shelters. Overall it was a sloppy start (although they seemed to have fixed most of the problems now).

      It makes me wonder if there was pressure to finish because of how they wanted to time the restructure. They thought they could be done two weeks after Lynnwood Link. Metro decided they would roll out both restructures on the same day. This may have put pressure on everyone to get things done quickly which led to them being sloppy.

4. Additionally a northbound bus stop might be added [for the 130th Station project].

   Really? I didn’t see that. Where would the stop be?

5. “Ridership on the route [49] has plummeted — for good reason.”

   How has ridership changed on the 2, 10, 11, 12, and 49 since the RapidRide G restructure? What’s the ridership on the 3-Summit branch? Has the 43’s ridership changed?

   1. How has ridership changed on the 2, 10, 11, 12, and 49 since the RapidRide G restructure?

      Funny you should ask. I ran a script to compare November 2023 to November 2024 for a bunch of routes in the area. Here is the change for November based on the previous year:

      Route Increase/Decrease
      2       -360
      3       -2882
      4       +3163
      10       -685
      11       -201
      12       -509
      43       +9
      49       -165
      60       +1111

      So the 2 saw a decrease of 360 in November 2024 versus 2023. Much of the ridership shifted to the 4 from the 3. But the 3/4 combination is actually above what it was before the change. The G got about 4300 riders in November so there is a net increase of about 3800 in November. The numbers were a bit different in December but the same basic idea:

      2       -6
      3       -2608
      4       +3455
      10       -501
      11       -198
      12       -88
      49       -268
      60       +582

      The G had higher ridership in December (4400) and the net increase in the area was about 4800. We don’t have stop data so we can’t look at the ridership of the Summit piece itself. But there is a net increase for the 3/4. If I am not mistaken there is less service hours on the line, so this would be surprising.

      Personally I think the 3/4 change is the one really good thing the planners came up with. I like the combination in general but I would simplify it a bit and change the timing. I would truncate the 4 at 23rd & Jefferson. Then I would run each bus every fifteen minutes. That means that Summit and Madrona would get fifteen minute service. Queen Anne would continue to get fifteen minute service and the shared section in First/Cherry Hill would continue to get a bus every 7.5 minutes. This would be an increase in service although not a huge one.

      More than anything it would finally make the 3/4 simple. Right now there are two versions of each bus. This way each bus would be consistent.

      1. This is against a backdrop of 10-15% ridership growth across the board, so anything less than that should be considered losing ridership

         Mostly unsurprising: the 2 is losing riders to the G; the 10, 11, 12, 49 are losing riders due to frequency: the 3/4, 60 are growing roughly with overall ridership

      2. This is against a backdrop of 10-15% ridership growth across the board, so anything less than that should be considered losing ridership

         Actually ridership has been going down on Metro for the months I looked at:

         December 2023: 324,809
         December 2024: 263,232

         November 2023: 359,972
         November 2024: 294,806

         This makes the improvement (due to the RapidRide G) even more impressive. It is swimming against the tide. It is worth noting ST Express is basically flat and that despite the expansion, Link ridership is not enough to make up for the loss in ridership. Overall ridership in the region is not going up (and is nowhere near what it was prior to the pandemic). Of course that could change but I think that would require more money or more restructures.

         I should have linked to the dashboards. This is the one for Metro. This is the one for ST.

      3. Metro’s dashboard is incomplete for aggregate data for the last few months. NTD data is more up to date. December hasn’t been released yet but I suspect it will follow the general trend of 10-15% growth this year.

         https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/monthly-module-adjusted-data-release

      4. So all the Pike/Pine routes combined are losing riders. That’s surprising and unfortunate. Although you compared a whole year, not just the 1-2 months since the restructure, so some of the loss may be longer-term factors.

         Unreliability comes to mind. It’s not high like the 131/132 or 62 but it’s medium. That affects people’s decisions: whether to use another route (like the G), change destinations (to somewhere where multiple routes overlap so you’re not dependent on one), not go at all, or drive or walk.

         The 3-Summit branch runs every 30 minutes until 7pm every day. So that’s a modest addition, and its ridership is low like always. Still, it makes the combined waits a little better, and its quietness is a stress-reducing oasis when you can use it. This level of service is at the midpoint of past service: the 14 ran every 30 minutes full time; the 47 ran every 40 minutes weekdays only.

         There’s more frequency on the shared segment between 3rd and 15th, and less frequency on each tail. So it’s better for me going to Trader Joe’s or downtown, but worse for people with only one route. I do sometimes walk to the G to get to Trader Joe’s or the library even though it’s an 8-minute walk uphill, to enjoy 6-minute service, shorter travel time due to the center lanes and wider stations, and next-arrival displays. So the G is taking some ridership from its periphery, who would otherwise have used the Pike-Pine routes.

         I took the G midafternoon last week, and two buses came simultaneously, then 7 minutes later two buses again, then a larger gap. So bus bunching is still occurring, but frequency isn’t bad in spite of it. Peak hours may have more large gaps as the streets are especially congested.

      5. It is useful to compare networks before and after restructures to learn if they were sound. So, for U Link, one could compare the Capitol Hill network before with that afterward; the signups could be fall 2015 v. fall 2018. The routes could be 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 43, 45, 48, 49, 60. Route 45 was new with U Link.
         It is early to consider the fall 2024 change. Route 2 is on a reroute.
         I would have found other hours to cut than Route 49.

         For the RossB short term numbers, note that Route 10 declined significantly after losing its good connection with the Capitol Hill station. Also, rides per route may not be as important as rides per hour; SDOT added hours to Route 60. The G Line uses many.

      6. “So all the Pike/Pine routes combined are losing riders. That’s surprising and unfortunate.”

         Personally, I don’t use the 10/12/49 west of Broadway unless I am traveling to a destination on Pike/Pine that is downtown, such as the Regal or maybe a restaurant. Even then, with >10 minute gaps in the schedule, it is faster sometimes to just walk.

         This is because all of these routes turn back after 4th. If my destination is further north of Pine, I would rather walk the two blocks over to Union to take the 2 and continue on 3rd. If I am heading south, then I would rather take the G and transfer at Madison/3rd and take advantage of the G’s better frequency and shorter travel time.

         So there really isn’t much use unless my destination/origin is on 15th/19th/Broadway north of Pine. And the frequency on each of those branches is not good.

      7. It is useful to compare networks before and after restructures to learn if they were sound. So, for U Link, one could compare the Capitol Hill network before with that afterward.

         Zach had an excellent write-up of the U-Link restructure back then: https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/02/21/the-ulink-restructure-was-a-bold-gamble-it-has-mostly-paid-off/.

         This comparison is more of an initial look. There is only two months worth of data. But comparing the same month year after year is probably about as good as we can get for a while. There are two clear trends:

         1) Ridership overall decreased.
         2) Ridership in the area increased, largely due to RapidRide G.

         As eddie mentioned, maybe this is due to an overall shift in service to the area. It isn’t clear that has happened. There are plenty of infrequent buses as well as what I would consider waste. Thus it is quite possible there is just as much overall service in the area it has simply been shifted towards the G (and the 60).

         Personally, I don’t use the 10/12/49 west of Broadway unless I am traveling to a destination on Pike/Pine that is downtown, such as the Regal or maybe a restaurant. Even then, with >10 minute gaps in the schedule, it is faster sometimes to just walk.

         That makes sense and one of the big flaws with the network. The Pike/Pine spine is simply too short. It only goes from 4th to Broadway. Worse yet, one of the few buses in the area that goes north (after going downtown) basically cannibalizes the G ridership. As RTB explained, it is easier to just take the 2 if you are headed north (instead of taking the G and transferring).

         Moving the 2 to Pike/Pine would be much better. You increase the frequency along Pine to every five minutes all the way to 13th. If you are headed north of downtown you use the same bus stop for the 2, 10 and 12. If the 2 comes along soon then you take it. But if you just missed the 2 you don’t have to wait for another one (unlike today). You just take a different bus bus and simply transfer downtown. Of course some people lose the ability to take the existing 2 heading north. But they can take the G and then transfer. Since the G is fast and frequent this isn’t much of a burden.

         It is all about consolidation.

6. RE Route 36 improvements:

   It’s been obvious to me that Beacon Ave from Jefferson Park southward to Othello needs a full rethinking. The parkway with the middle median has become a mish-mash of paved and unpaved parking areas, unkept grass, untrimmed shrubs and trees and a multi-use trail of mediocre upkeep that meanders through it — all while the traffic lanes are awkwardly set apart (too wide to function well as a two way street but too narrow to be treated as a one-way pair).

   I get making bus improvements north of there but I hope that a broader effort to refresh this southern segment for everyone could be pursued instead before spending much on transit changes. I would hate to see the investment get destroyed if a needed refresh ever goes to construction..

   I have no clear vision of what a refresh would be. Since most of the corridors is residential, it requires buy-in from the residents. It would take careful design.

   The median is not designed to be a usable park. A change to make that happen should be one objective in a refresh.

   I do think some large traffic circles could even be considered at Columbian and Graham. Those signals today have long directional phases for Beacon that make no one happy going through them no matter the mode they’re using (car, bus, bicycle, feet). But the bigger task seems to be in just rethinking the full cross section.

   1. > I hope that a broader effort to refresh this southern segment for everyone could be pursued instead before spending much on transit changes. I would hate to see the investment get destroyed if a needed refresh ever goes to construction..

      Generally they are planning on extending/improving the center bike lanes as part of the beacon ave bike lanes. Specifically the “middle segment” will have outer protected bike lanes while the “south segment” will have inner bike lanes (like it currently does) https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bike-program/protected-bike-lanes/beacon-hill-bike-route

      For bus improvements it’s generally BAT lanes at the stop signs. It’s discussed at https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/07/05/metro-plans-to-speed-up-beacon-hills-workhorse-route-36/ and https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/07/30/rapidride-corridor-1064/ and https://kingcountymetro.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_KCMetro_Rt36Improvements_PPT_English.pdf

7. Thanks for this write-up, Wesley!

   I fear that further investment on the 132 route path will become justification for not altering its path to eventually serve Tukwila International Boulevard Station, because of the sunk-cost fallacy.

   The 132 has a weak southern anchor at Burien Transit Center., The further south the 1 Line grows, the more TIBS would become a much stronger anchor for the 132.

   I hope the 124 and 131 go first, to buy time for moving the 132 as a post-Federal-Way-Link-extension restructure, in which saved hours from shortening the 132 could help make the F Line more frequent.

   1. It’s more an issue of breaking the Burien – South Park – 4th Ave S connection. Presumably people going to Burien would object, and Burien is a city with a downtown and retail, while TIB is the middle of nowhere. It would be hard to convince Metro to break that, unless it had enough hours to keep the Burien service and add TIB service. One question is whether there’s actual passenger demand for the South Park – Burien corridor; the other is whether Metro assumes there is even if there isn’t.

      From Burien to downtown Seattle it is odd that the H, 131, and 132 overlap. You’d think everybody would take the H, and if the other two stopped serving Burien, the H could maybe get some more runs to compensate. Why is there a route each in Highland Park and South Park that go to Burien and 4th Ave S? I don’t know.

      The best way to get the 132 rerouted would be to get a number of South Park residents and neighborhood organizations to sign a petition asking for it and to ask your city councilmember for it. If there’s a sizeable number of residents asking for it, and no significant opposition, then you might have a chance of getting it someday.

      1. Please consider Route 128 as well; it serves TIBS.
         Could Route 132 be streamlined by deleting its Riverton deviation?

   2. Where will these route 132 investments be? They may be in places that would still be used by a route going to TIB.

   3. The 132 has a weak southern anchor at Burien Transit Center.

      It doesn’t seem week to me. It gets plenty of riders — over 200 a day, or roughly 1/6 the total ridership on the route. It isn’t clear it would have more if it ended at TIBS. Fewer riders board the 128 going north. As Mike mentioned the problem with TIBS is that there is nothing there. It is a major connection point, but it is mainly just a connection point. The crossing system that exists now seems pretty good. Maybe when Stride runs the express from TIBS to Burien it might make sense to send the 132 to TIBS but even then I fear that Stride won’t be that frequent (making the transfer more painful than it should be).

   4. It’s a bit complicated here. I’ve debated myself over where is the best “south of seattle terminal” for king county buses. to the north it is obviously northgate.

      But to the south, it is hard to choose from burien, tibs, southcenter, and even renton. plus seatac airport could be a large contender.

      1. anyways it might actually be an interesting article idea with choosing a couple anchor points and seeing and comparing how the bus system would look like

      2. I’ve debated myself over where is the best “south of seattle terminal” for king county buses. to the north it is obviously northgate.

         If you are talking about buses that travel on the freeway than sure, Northgate is a fine choice. But otherwise Northgate is very awkward and difficult to serve. It is really not a good terminus from most directions. Nor is it a particularly big destination. It is puny compared to the UW. Even Roosevelt is now in the same league as Northgate. The advantage of Roosevelt is that it is so much easier to serve. The various corridors converge onto Roosevelt. Roosevelt, 15th, Lake City Way — they all converge onto Roosevelt. Even 85th goes through Roosevelt if you are headed south. Roosevelt Station also sits at an excellent crossing corridor (65th). Northgate does not.

         But the main reason you would end at Roosevelt is to save a few bucks. The obvious terminal for buses in the north end is the UW. It doesn’t have to go inside campus — the U-District Station is just fine. This is more urban than anything to the north. Not even close, really.

         The Northgate Transit Center was designed around the freeway ramps. Nothing more — nothing less. The old 41 was majestic. During peak it would transport people to downtown in a jiffy; first on dedicate lanes of the freeway and then in a tunnel. It really was special. But now the transit center is largely obsolete. It has a station, yes — so do a lot of other areas. The sooner we accept this (from a network standpoint) the better.

         Just about anywhere — even in the area — would have made a better transit center. For example 5th NE & 103rd would be a big improvement. Northgate Way and Roosevelt would be even better. You really can’t say that with the stations to the south — they are in a good place.

      3. If you were going to pick one central hub for the south it would be SeaTac. It has the two big transit lines in the region — the A and Link. It is a major destination and a major employment center. It is not easy to access from an east-west perspective but you can say that about most of the alternatives.

         That being said I don’t think it makes sense to have a hub and spoke system centered around SeaTac (or any other south end location). It makes more sense to have multiple hubs as well as some sort of hybrid hub/grid system.

8. Just an FYI:

   It appears that the ST Board officially renamed the 130th Station as “Pinehurst Station” Thursday afternoon.

   https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/250123%20Board%20Agenda.pdf

   When I clicked on the hyperlink in the article, the name “Pinehurst Station” now appears in the header.

   Note too that it’s just Pinehurst. There’s no numbered street in the name.

   1. Accodring to google maps, It Is a 21 minute walk to what I consider Pinehurst.

      1. I agree (and I live in Pinehurst). I would have much preferred “130th” but I also would have used simple street names for most of the stations north of the UW Station (“45th”, 65th”, “Northgate”, “130th”, “145th”, “185th”, “Mountlake Terrace” and “Lynnwood”). But at least the name is fairly short.

      2. Pinehurst is the closest well-known name. The whole area between 130th and 145th is on the fringe between Northgate, Lake City, and Shoreline. We on the blog debated names such as Haller Lake, Lake City, Jackson Park South, Bitter Lake, etc, and the most people concluded that Pinehurst was best.

         “Lake City” seemed a bit inappropriate because it’s a way’s away and connotes a denser area, and it would conflict with a urban Lake City station on a potential future Bothell line. “Haller Lake” connotes the quiet green area around the lake on the west side of I-5, and many people don’t know Haller Lake exists or where it is. In contrast, extending “Pinehurst” is extending a similar area that’s nearby.

      3. 130th is clear, and true.

         If I’m meeting a friend at Pinehurst Pub, take Link and get off at Pinehurst, first I’m going to be confused, then I’m going to be tired and late. Then I’m going to be pissed.

      4. If I’m meeting a friend at Pinehurst Pub, take Link and get off at Pinehurst, first I’m going to be confused, then I’m going to be tired and late.

         Yes, that would be a very long walk. Even if you catch a bus to 15th & 125th you would end up walking several blocks. If the buses are the same as today you would be better off catching the 348 (from Northgate). In other words you want to use the Northgate Station to get to most of Pinehurst and the Pinehurst Station to get to places like Lake City and Bitter Lake. (To be fair if you were headed to 15th & 125th — which I would consider part of Pinehurst — then you would take use the Pinehurst Station.)

         As Mike pointed out the station is not clearly in any neighborhood. According to the official neighborhood atlas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northgate,_Seattle#/media/File:Seattle_-_Northgate_map.jpg) it is just barely in Pinehurst which itself is in Northgate. North Northgate would probably be the most accurate name but of course they didn’t want to name it that either (and I don’t blame them). I don’t think it is an unlucky coincidence that the station happens to be right on the neighborhood dividing line. Dividing lines between neighborhoods tend to be very arbitrary but using the freeway as the dividing lines is much better than most. The problem is that they ran the trains on the freeway. This meant that they ignored the center of the communities in the area. It isn’t that there is a better neighborhood name there — it is that there is no neighborhood center there. Of course there isn’t. It is the freeway.

         But neighborhood boundaries are arbitrary. If you look at the map it shows much of Pinehurst Way as not being in Pinehurst. That means that according to the atlas Pinehurst Pocket Park is not in Pinehurst — it is part of Victory Heights (https://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/nmaps/html/NN-1045S.htm). I don’t think most people agree with that — they would put Victory Heights on the other side of Northgate Way.

         I think it is quite possible that this will stretch the generally accepted definition of Pinehurst the other direction. There may be plenty of people who consider themselves to be living in “North Northgate” who will instead say they live in Pinehurst and interestingly enough, close to the station.

9. What part does KCM play in Bellevue Connector? I thought this is 100% a City of Bellevue thing.

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